History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

The chapter then exposes Blifil’s interior motives. Though he declared himself to the squire “perfectly satisfied with his reception,” he was by no means satisfied in truth, being convinced of the hatred and scorn of his mistress; this produced “no less reciprocal hatred and scorn in him.” The narrator explains why Blifil did not put an immediate end to the courtship: he had appetites, and Sophia’s distress—“her tears added brightness to her eyes, and her breasts rose higher with her sighs”—made her in his eyes “a most delicious morsel,” an ortolan to an epicure. Her aversion, the narrator writes, “served rather to heighten the pleasure he proposed in rifling her charms, as it added triumph to lust,” and “revenge itself was not without its share in the gratifications which he promised himself.” The rivalling of Jones and the supplanting of him in her affections “added another spur to his pursuit.” To these appetites and resentments is added the prospect of Western’s estate, all to be settled on Sophia and her issue. For these reasons, Blifil is so desirous of the match that he intends to deceive Sophia by pretending love to her, and to deceive her father and his own uncle by pretending he is beloved by her. He avails himself of the piety of Thwackum, who holds that if the end proposed is religious, it matters not how wicked the means; and of the philosophy of Square, which teaches that the end is immaterial, so the means are fair. When examined by Allworthy touching the inclinations of Sophia, Blifil “preserved a salvo for his conscience” by answering with “equivocations” and “imposture,” conveying a lie “with the heart only, without making the tongue guilty of an untruth.” The narrator observes that this “excellent method” has “quieted the conscience of many a notable deceiver,” and questions whether it can be of much avail against Omniscience. Allworthy is “pretty well satisfied,” and the treaty is concluded at the end of two days; nothing remains but the office of the lawyers. The chapter closes on a cliffhanger: Sophia herself takes “preventive measures to put a final end to the whole treaty, and to rob both church and law of those taxes which these wise bodies have thought proper to receive from the propagation of the human species in a lawful manner.”

Chapter x. – Chapter v.

The section opens with Tom Jones, having been cast out by Squire Allworthy, attempting to travel to Bristol. His guide proves ignorant of the route, and Jones becomes lost after receiving contradictory directions from villagers. A plain-looking Quaker, mistaking Jones’s melancholy for pious grief, advises him to lodge at a nearby inn and, learning that Jones has also suffered a daughter’s elopement, extends what he considers Christian sympathy. The compassion, however, vanishes the moment the innkeeper’s guide reveals that Jones is “a poor parish bastard” recently turned out of doors; the Quaker departs in a dudgeon equal to that of a duke affronted, and the landlord refuses Jones a bed. Jones sleeps in a rush chair, while the host, having already been stripped of his goods by his wife, keeps watch by the kitchen fire against an imaginary thief.

The arrival of a company of soldiers transforms Jones’s fortunes. After paying the reckoning of three shillings and fourpence for the troop—earning their applause as a “worthy gentleman”—Jones learns from the sergeant that they are marching against the Highland rebels under the Duke of Cumberland, in the recent Jacobite rising. Possessed, as Fielding notes, of “heroic ingredients” and a zeal for the Protestant cause, Jones resolves to enlist as a volunteer. The innkeeper’s guide demands payment for the horses, but the soldiers condemn him with threats of the gauntlet, and Jones departs with the regiment, leaving behind a landlord who curses him as a “pure one” with a laced waistcoat.

The subsequent chapters introduce the officers: a veteran lieutenant near sixty, wounded at the Battle of Tanières under the Duke of Marlborough and frozen in rank for forty years because his wife refused the colonel’s improper advances; a French lieutenant who spoke no language adequately; and two ensigns, one bred to an attorney and the other the son of a butler’s wife. At dinner, the lieutenant commends Jones for his classical learning when the latter compares the soldiers’ march to the cackling of Greeks and Trojans in Pope’s Homer, and Northerton, the cruder ensign, protests his ignorance of such fancies. When Jones toasts Miss Sophia Western, Northerton claims to have known a woman of that name at Bath “lain with by half the young fellows.” The quarrel escalates, and Northerton discharges a bottle at Jones’s right temple, felling him.

While the wounded Jones is carried to bed, three extended exchanges occupy the chapter that follows. The landlady, in her rambling address, laments the burden of soldiery, taxes, and window-lights. The surgeon, when consulted, delivers a Latin-laden discourse on contusions, lacerations, and the tibia, confessing at last that the lieutenant could not understand a syllable, and recommending bleeding, water-gruel, and jellies. The lieutenant then engages Jones in casuistry: he admits the Christian command against malice, but argues that a man of honour cannot obey it, citing a chaplain’s opinion that a “latitude” must be granted to soldiers. The encounter satirizes the gap between orthodox Christian ethics and the code of honour.

Determined to act, Jones swallows cock-broth and rises. He bargains with the sergeant for a sword, which the sergeant—convincing himself Jones is light-headed—initially prices at twenty guineas, before prudently retreating to twenty shillings; Jones pays a guinea. Robed in a bloody white coat and turbaned in bandages, Jones approaches the sentinel guarding Northerton, who fires his piece, falls flat, and later claims to have seen a ghost. Jones finds the room empty: Northerton has escaped up the chimney with the landlady’s collusion, having deposited fifty pounds of company funds in her hands. The lieutenant, at first suspecting the sentinel of treachery, releases him after Jones vouches for his innocence.

Book VIII opens with a lengthy prefatory chapter in which Fielding sets out the rules for the “marvellous” in fiction. He argues that writers must observe possibility, probability, and “conversation of character”—that agents act consistently with their natures—drawing examples from Homer, Herodotus, and his own Fisher anecdote to illustrate the bounds of credibility. The landlady subsequently visits Jones, mentioning that she knows Sophia and Allworthy; the surgeon, denied payment, departs in a rage; and the barber “Little Benjamin” is introduced, a learned eccentric who quotes Latin and conceals a second profession.